Rethinking How to Measure Circular Food Systems: Lessons from the Circular Food Systems for Rwanda Annual Learning Event

The Circular Food Systems for Rwanda (CIRF) project held its annual learning event from Oct. 21-Oct. 23, 2025, in Kigali, Rwanda. The main objective was to reflect on lessons and envision next steps as the project prepares to conclude in December 2026. During the event, CIRF partners and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) shared key achievements from the project, including increased revenues and new jobs created through the development of circular products. CIRF's multi-stakeholder policy platform also influenced circular food systems policy, resulting in Rwanda's adoption of two International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards on circularity and the inclusion of circular economy principles in three key government strategic documents, including the Fifth Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation (STA5).

WRI and partners are now preparing to scale CIRF's impact across Africa, establishing a replicable model for transformation through an initiative called Accelerating the Circular Economy for Food (ACE4Food). As the project moves from pilot stage to a multi-country initiative, the aim will shift from supporting individual enterprises to engaging government institutions and influencing policies, markets and value chains. This makes systems-level measurement essential to understand whether transformation is taking place, avoid unintended trade-offs and reinforce change across value chain actors.

With scale in mind, a key question that emerged throughout the learning event was how to capture, reflect and report on the systemic impact of projects such as ACE4Food. The puzzle remains: How do we really know if food systems are becoming more circular?

It's a question that many organizations are beginning to ask, and there's no easy answer. CIRF tracks impact mostly at the level of individual businesses, capturing valuable but narrow insights. What's often missing from these types of projects are practical ways to measure the system-level impacts of circularity, such as reductions in waste and emissions, policy change, improved nutrition and more resilient communities.

Inside our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Impact Session

To explore these measurement challenges more intentionally, we convened peers and funders for a dedicated MEL discussion during the CIRF learning event. Monitoring and evaluation experts unpacked challenges, shared best practices, and explored how to move toward a more aligned and meaningful way of measuring circular food systems.

The panel included MEL experts from IKEA Foundation, Resonance, WRI, IITA and SNV.

The panel of experts discussed challenges such as the resource-intensive nature of collecting quantitative data on waste and emissions; the disproportionate burden placed on entrepreneurs and small farmers in terms of data collection and sharing; and the difficulty of attributing results to specific interventions or projects.

Most panel participants acknowledged the difficulty of finding the right balance between individual and systems-level impact measurements. Current efforts are concentrated on policy changes, with the future aim of broader systemic evaluation.

Key obstacles include the lack of collective measurement frameworks and user-friendly tools across programs. There is also uncertainty around how to track complex changes, like market dynamics and policy adoption. Participants discussed practical solutions, including building SME capacity for self-monitoring, leveraging multi-stakeholder platforms to influence government policy alignment (particularly with Rwanda's nationally determined contribution), and shifting from attribution to contribution models that harvest outcomes and signs of change.

From Talk to Tools: Practical Ways to Measure System-Level Transformation

Despite these challenges, panelists highlighted several approaches that offer promising pathways forward:

Outcomes harvesting

This method works well when results are unpredictable, conditions are rapidly changing or key variables are unknown. The process typically starts by collecting stories of change across stakeholders and then verifying those changes. At the individual level, these might be changes in knowledge, behavior, skills or business metrics. At the system level, they may include shifts in relationships, rules, dynamics or broader patterns. The next step is to identify how a specific intervention contributed to the change.

Contribution analysis

This approach mirrors the outcome-harvesting process but is anchored in a theory of change. Contribution analysis examines whether an intervention followed the expected pathway and contributed to the expected outcomes. For systems-level change, contribution pathways are more complex, often requiring documentation of behavioral or relational shifts and consideration of alternative explanations, including political turnover or other external forces.

Market systems framework

A market systems framework is a way of understanding how a market actually functions by looking beyond individual actors to the wider set of relationships, exchanges, incentives, and formal or informal rules that shape a value chain. Rather than focusing only on outputs or short-term results, it helps identify who interacts with whom; what motivates different actors; and how power, information and resources flow through the system. This approach often draws on tools such as outcome harvesting to document what has changed over time and social network analysis to reveal patterns of collaboration and influence. By paying attention to small, incremental shifts in behavior, coordination and decision-making, a market systems framework supports sense-making in complex environments and helps practitioners understand how broader change is emerging, even before large or visible outcomes take place.

What Signals of Systems Change Might Look Like

Based on these approaches, we asked one central question: If a food system is becoming more circular, what are the tangible results?

Our panel outlined several early "signals" that can hint at whether circularity is beginning to take root in a system long before major policy milestones or market shifts appear:

1. Changing behaviors and norms: Many systemic changes begin with people, rather than policies. Signals might include growing consumer interest in circular products, farmers becoming more aware of circular practices, or knowledge-sharing spreading organically through communities. These changes often show up first in attitudes and relationships before hard numbers.
2. Environmental practices as the default: Early indicators of environmental transformation are often subtle, like more farmers adopting waste-to-value practices, improvements in water use and recycling, or local experimentation with regenerative inputs. These shifts point to a system in which circularity is no longer a niche idea but part of routine practice.
3. Market evolution: Economic signals, like increased commercialization of circular products, new financing models, or financial institutions showing stronger understanding of circularity, suggest the market is beginning to reward circular behavior. These signals don't require massive industry overhauls; they often start as small but telling adjustments in incentives.
4. Governance and policy alignment: The strongest signals of systems change often appear in the enabling environment. This includes circularity showing up in the language of public officials, broadening participation in multi-stakeholder platforms, or new policy proposals aligned with circular economy goals. These signals are often incremental and difficult to capture before formal policies are enacted, which can create challenges in identification.
5. Multidimensionality: Genuine systems change must show coherence across social, environmental and economic progress rather than spikes in one area. It's important not to over-index on one domain (for example, economic growth) and miss unintended trade-offs.

Each indicator on its own does not confirm systems transformation. But in combination, they help practitioners sense whether circularity is beginning to take root and where reinforcing interventions may be needed. These indicators also reflect the reality that systems change is often detectable long before it can be conclusively measured.

Toward a Shared Understanding of Circular Impact

The annual learning event indicated that CIRF is still at the early stages of building shared systems-level measurement approaches. The discussion built on the success of circularity projects at the SME and policy level in Rwanda and reflected on the larger ambition of systems transformation. It is clear that the tools and frameworks to measure circularity at scale are not currently accessible in the project but are beginning to develop.

Ultimately, answering the initial question - "How do we really know if food systems are becoming more circular?" - will require collaboration and shared learning. Measuring systems change, rather than only individual outcomes, will be essential to understanding whether this work is contributing to real transformation.

Several questions remain to help frame further work:

• What does systemic change look like in a specific context?
• What would demonstrate proof of transformative change in agri-food systems?
• What tools and lenses can help monitor the systems-level outcomes and impacts of circular interventions?